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Healing Powers
Alternative Medicine, Spiritual Communities, and the State
Fred M. Frohock
University of Chicago Press, 1992
The personal testimony of individuals engaged in healing practices and the opposing voices of orthodox and alternative medicines are the center of Healing Powers. Focusing on medical norms and practices and on competing philosophies of the mind, the body, reality, and rationality across radically different "belief systems", Fred Frohock clarifies the social and legal dilemmas represented by "scientific medicine" and "alternative care."

"Frohock goes beyond the often irreconcilable differences between scientific biomedicine and alternative care by clarifying the social and legal dilemmas they present. . . . A noteworthy contribution forcing us to rethink what medical care is all about."—Jeffrey Michael Clare, Journal of the American Medical Association

"The book does more and better than simply provide a social-scientific proposal. It also gives not only a hearing but a voice to those who follow alternative therapies. . . . Frohock's accounts of their stories—along with the stories of the medical professionals—are eloquent and fascinating."—Allen Verhey, Medical Humanities Review

"Contains a storehouse of valuable information about the historical, philosophical, and psychological bases of alternative approaches to healing."—Marshall B. Kapp, New England Journal of Medicine

"Frohock introduces us to the scientific naturopaths and to physicians who believe in the mind's power to heal, to charismatics who believe in but cannot explain their powers, to those who test God and those who merely accept. He writes so well that I felt I had met these people."—Arthur W. Frank, Christian Century
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Healing Traditions
African Medicine, Cultural Exchange, and Competition in South Africa, 1820–1948
Karen E. Flint
Ohio University Press, 2008

In August 2004, South Africa officially sought to legally recognize the practice of traditional healers. Largely in response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and limited both by the number of practitioners and by patients’ access to treatment, biomedical practitioners looked toward the country’s traditional healers as important agents in the development of medical education and treatment. This collaboration has not been easy. The two medical cultures embrace different ideas about the body and the origin of illness, but they do share a history of commercial and ideological competition and different relations to state power. Healing Traditions: African Medicine, Cultural Exchange, and Competition in South Africa, 1820–1948 provides a long-overdue historical perspective to these interactions and an understanding that is vital for the development of medical strategies to effectively deal with South Africa’s healthcare challenges.

Between 1820 and 1948 traditional healers in Natal, South Africa, transformed themselves from politically powerful men and women who challenged colonial rule and law into successful entrepreneurs who competed for turf and patients with white biomedical doctors and pharmacists. To understand what is “traditional” about traditional medicine, Flint argues that we must consider the cultural actors and processes not commonly associated with African therapeutics: white biomedical practitioners, Indian healers, and the implementing of white rule.

Carefully crafted, well written, and powerfully argued, Flint’s analysis of the ways that indigenous medical knowledge and therapeutic practices were forged, contested, and transformed over two centuries is highly illuminating, as is her demonstration that many “traditional” practices changed over time. Her discussion of African and Indian medical encounters opens up a whole new way of thinking about the social basis of health and healing in South Africa. This important book will be core reading for classes and future scholarship on health and healing in Africa.

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Health and Economic Outcomes Among the Alumni of the Wounded Warrior Project
2013
Jennifer L. Cerully
RAND Corporation, 2014
In this report, the authors use the Wounded Warrior Project’s 2013 survey of its members (alumni) to understand the physical, mental, and economic challenges that Wounded Warriors face. The researchers find that at least half of alumni reported dealing with mental health conditions such as depression and posttraumatic stress disorder, and many of these alumni reported difficulties or delays in seeking mental health care, or not doing so at all.
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Health and Health Care In Developing Countries
Sociological Perspectives
Peter Conrad
Temple University Press, 1993

In this seminal collection of articles on health care in the Third World, sociological perspectives are applied to medical issues in revealing ways. Fourteen essays (all but two of which are original to this volume) examine the social production of health, disease, and systems of care throughout the developing world. The volume covers a range of areas—central Africa, Nigeria, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Nepal, China, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Mexico—and a broad scope of topics, from emergency care, the AIDS epidemic, and women's health care, to public health programs and national health care policies.

Contributors address the central question of whether health systems in developing areas should emphasize the role of clinical medicine and individual physicians or community and preventive medical resources. The major health problems faced by these societies—inadequate sanitation, infectious disease, high infant-child mortality, and a lack of family planning—indicate the greater need for health educators and public health workers despite many poor nations' desire for Western doctors. Other topics that are examined include the process of seeking medical aid; the relationship between traditional and modern medicines; medical education, hospital care, and communication between doctors and patients in developing countries; and the relevance and application of sociology in Third World settings.

This volume seeks to draw attention to the significance of medical sociology for understanding Third World health problems and to show how examining developing societies may necessitate reframing or modifying some Western sociological notions. In addition, these essays stretch the boundaries of medical sociology to include Third World issues.

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Health and Human Rights
Basic International Documents
Stephen P. Marks
Harvard University Press
This collection of texts provides the practitioner, scholar, and advocate with easy access to the most basic instruments of international law and policy that express the values of human rights for advancing health. It is the first in a series on health and human rights from the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health. Topics include: professional ethics; research and experimentation; treatment of prisoners and detainees; patients' rights; right to health; right to life; freedom from torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide; the right to an adequate standard of living; women and reproductive health; children; persons with disabilities; rights of older persons; infectious diseases; business, trade, and intellectual property; occupational health and safety; biotechnology; and protection of the environment. This work will be an indispensable reference for students and professors in courses covering the intersection of health and human rights.
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Health and Human Rights
Basic International Documents, Second Edition
Stephen P. Marks
Harvard University Press
This collection of texts is updated and expanded from the first edition to provide the practitioner, scholar, and advocate with access to the most basic instruments of international law and policy that express the values of human rights for advancing health. The topics covered include professional ethics; research and experimentation; treatment of prisoners and detainees; patients' rights; right to health; right to life; freedom from torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide; the right to an adequate standard of living; women and reproductive health; children; persons with disabilities; rights of older persons; infectious diseases; business, trade, and intellectual property; occupational health and safety; biotechnology; and protection of the environment. This book will be an indispensable reference work.
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Health and Human Rights
Basic International Documents, Third Edition
Stephen P. Marks
Harvard University Press
The collection of materials in this latest edition of Health and Human Rights: Basic International Documents has been updated and expanded from the first two editions to provide the practitioner, scholar, and advocate with access to the most basic instruments of international law and policy that express the values of human rights for advancing health. The topics covered include professional ethics; research and experimentation; bioethics and biotechnology; the right to health; the right to life; freedom from torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide; the right to an adequate standard of living; women and reproductive health; children; persons with disabilities; the rights of other vulnerable groups; infectious diseases; business, trade, and intellectual property; non-communicable diseases; the right to a clean environment; and sustainable development. This book will be an indispensable reference for everyone working at the intersection of health and human rights.
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Health and Work Productivity
Making the Business Case for Quality Health Care
Edited by Ronald C. Kessler and Paul E. Stang
University of Chicago Press, 2006
A recent study of productivity in the workplace revealed that workers spend on average eight percent of their workday doing nothing. This statistic takes on greater significance when we find that health problems impact employee productivity loss by an even greater percentage. In light of this discovery, a group of leading experts from the emerging field of health and productivity research argues that the expansion of health care benefits represents a substantial investment opportunity for employers.
 
Health and Work Productivity presents state-of-the-art health and productivity research that suggests interventions aimed at prevention, early detection, and best-practice treatment of workers along with an informed allocation strategy can produce significant cost-benefits for employers. Contributors cover all the major aspects of this new area of research: approaches to studying the effects of health on productivity, ways for employers to estimate the costs of productivity loss, concrete suggestions for future research developments in the area, and the implications of this research for public policy.
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Health Care at Risk
A Critique of the Consumer-Driven Movement
Timothy Stoltzfus Jost
Duke University Press, 2007
In Health Care at Risk Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, a leading expert in health law, weighs in on consumer-driven health care (CDHC), which many policymakers and analysts are promoting as the answer to the severe access, cost, and quality problems afflicting the American health care system. The idea behind CDHC is simple: consumers should be encouraged to save for medical care with health savings accounts, rely on these accounts to cover routine medical expenses, and turn to insurance only to cover catastrophic medical events. Advocates of consumer-driven health care believe that if consumers are spending their own money on medical care, they will purchase only services with real value to them. Jost contends that supporters of CDHC rely on oversimplified ideas about health care, health care systems, economics, and human nature.

In this concise, straightforward analysis, Jost challenges the historical and theoretical assumptions on which the consumer-driven health care movement is based and reexamines the empirical evidence that it claims as support. He traces the histories of both private health insurance in the United States and the CDHC movement. The idea animating the drive for consumer-driven health care is that the fundamental problem with the American health care system is what economists call “moral hazard,” the risk that consumers overuse services for which they do not bear the cost. Jost reveals moral hazard as an inadequate explanation of the complex problems plaguing the American health care system, and he points to troubling legal and ethical issues raised by CDHC. He describes how other countries have achieved universal access to high-quality health care at lower cost, without relying extensively on cost sharing, and he concludes with a proposal for how the United States might do the same, incorporating aspects of CDHC while recognizing its limitations.

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The Health Care Mess
How We Got Into It and What It Will Take To Get Out
Julius B. Richmond and Rashi Fein, Ph.D.
Harvard University Press, 2005

If we can decode the human genome and fashion working machines out of atoms, why can't we navigate the quagmire that is our health care system? In this important new book, Julius Richmond and Rashi Fein recount the fraught history of health care in America since the 1960s. After the advent of Medicare and Medicaid and with the progressive goal to make advances in medical care available to all, medical costs began their upward spiral. Cost control measures failed and led to the HMO revolution, turning patients into consumers and doctors into providers. The swelling ranks of Americans without any insurance at all dragged the United States to the bottom of the list of industrialized nations.

Over the last century medical education was also profoundly transformed into today's powerful triumvirate of academic medical centers, schools of medicine and public health, and research programs, all of which have shaped medical practice and medical care. The authors show how the promises of medical advances have not been matched either by financing or by delivery of care.

As a new crisis looms, and the existing patchwork of insurance is poised to unravel, American leaders must again take up the question of health care. This book brings the voice of reason and the promise of compromise to that debate.

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Health Care Reform
A Human Rights Approach
Audrey R. Chapman, Editor
Georgetown University Press, 1994

Arguing that health care should be a human right rather than a commodity, the distinguished contributors to this volume call for a new social covenant establishing a right to a standard of health care consistent with society's level of resources. By linking rights with limits, they offer a framework for seeking national consensus on a cost-conscious standard of universal medical care. The authors identify the policy implications of recognizing and implementing such a right and develop specific criteria to measure the success of health care reform from a human rights perspective.

Health Care Reform also offers specific and timely criticism of managed competition and its offspring, the Clinton plan for health care reform. Because health care reform will inevitably be an ongoing process of assessment and revision—especially since managed competition has not been implemented elsewhere—this book will last beyond the moment by providing vital standards to guide the future evolution of the health care system.

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Health Care Reform and the Battle for the Body Politic
Dan Beauchamp
Temple University Press, 1996
"Dan Beauchamp's important book melds a personal odyssey, an abiding, passionate commitment to one version of comprehensive health reform, and highly disciplined political analysis. His years in the Cuomo Administration provide him with rich insight into how that scion of liberalism inched toward, but ultimately shied away from, major health reform in the Empire State. His provocative assessment of the missed opportunities represented by the Clinton health plan also deserves the attention of any serious student of health politics and policy." --Frank J. Thompson, Professor of Dean, Graduate School of Public Affairs, State University of New York at Albany While most studies of health care reform have focused on solving the market's failure, controlling costs, or providing universal access, Dan E. Beauchamp adeptly discusses health care reform as a strategy for dealing with the failures of politics--not just the failures of the health care market. As the former Deputy Commissioner for Policy and Planning for the New York State Department of Health, Beauchamp presents a revelatory first-person narrative about his work to develop a universal health care and insurance plan for New York State. His enlightening personal account includes discussions of his efforts to develop a national model of the New York plan for Mario Cuomo (during the period when the governor considered running for the Democratic nomination for president), and his perceptive critique of the failed Clinton plan for reform. Beauchamp gets beyond topics like global budgets, rate-setting, and managed competition to outline the idea of health plans as a means for the public to come together in a way that will change forever the way we think about health care, which he calls "the battle for the body politic." A large part of engaging in the "battle," he argues, involves addressing and resolving racial and class divisions that have always underscored America's political reality. Ultimately, Beauchamp argues for a reform that would promote health and social equality, one that would change and strengthen our social awareness of health care as a common good. "Dan Beauchamp is a singular and important voice in the ongoing health care debate. Instead of focusing on the technical details of health reform, he spins a compelling personal narrative, entices the reader into the truly important questions: How do health plans work politically? How can they change the way we think about health, health care and ourselves as a country? While economists focus on financing schemes, and bioethicists search for underlying values, Beauchamp probes how a health care system shapes our politics and affects our experience of who we are as Americans. His book is exceedingly valuable; it reveals just how much is at stake in health care reform." --Larry R. Churchill, Professor and Chair, Department of Social Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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The Health Care Safety Net in a Post-Reform World
Hall, Mark A
Rutgers University Press, 2012

The Health Care Safety Net in a Post-Reform World examines how national health care reform will impact safety net programs that serve low-income and uninsured patients. The “safety net” refers to the collection of hospitals, clinics, and doctors who treat disadvantaged people, including those without insurance, regardless of their ability to pay. Despite comprehensive national health care reform, over twenty million people will remain uninsured. And many of those who obtain insurance from reform will continue to face shortages of providers in their communities willing or able to serve them. As the demand for care grows with expanded insurance, so will the pressure on an overstretched safety net.

This book, with contributions from leading health care scholars, is the first comprehensive assessment of the safety net in over a decade. Rather than view health insurance and the health care safety net as alternatives to each other, it examines their potential to be complementary aspects of a broader effort to achieve equity and quality in health care access. It also considers whether the safety net can be improved and strengthened to a level that can provide truly universal access, both through expanded insurance and the creation of a well-integrated and reasonably supported network of direct health care access for the uninsured.

Seeing safety net institutions as key components of post-health care reform in the United States—as opposed to stop-gap measures or as part of the problem—is a bold idea. And as presented in this volume, it is an idea whose time has come.

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Health Colonialism
Urban Wastelands and Hospital Frontiers
Shiloh Krupar
University of Minnesota Press, 2023

The role of American hospital expansions in health disparities and medical apartheid

Health Colonialism considers how U.S. urban development policies contribute to the uneven and unjust distribution of health care in this country. Here, Shiloh Krupar investigates the racially inequitable effects of elite U.S. hospitals on their surrounding neighborhoods and their role in consolidating frontiers of land primed for redevelopment.

Naming this frontier “medical brownfields,” Krupar shows how hospitals leverage their domestic real estate empires to underwrite international prospecting for patients and overseas services and specialty clinics. Her pointed analysis reveals that decolonizing health care efforts must scrutinize the land practices of nonprofit medical institutions and the liberal foundations of medical apartheid perpetuated by globalizing American health care.

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Health in Ruins
The Capitalist Destruction of Medical Care at a Colombian Maternity Hospital
César Ernesto Abadía-Barrero
Duke University Press, 2022
In Health in Ruins César Ernesto Abadía-Barrero chronicles the story of El Materno—Colombia’s oldest maternity and neonatal health center and teaching hospital—over several decades as it faced constant threats of government shutdown. Using team-based and collaborative ethnography to analyze the social life of neoliberal health policy, Abadía-Barrero details the everyday dynamics around teaching, learning, and working in health care before, during, and after privatization. He argues that health care privatization is not only about defunding public hospitals; it also ruins rich traditions of medical care by denying or destroying ways of practicing medicine that challenge Western medicine. Despite radical cuts in funding and a corrupt and malfunctioning privatized system, El Materno’s professors, staff, and students continued to find ways to provide innovative, high-quality, and noncommodified health care. By tracking the violences, conflicts, hopes, and uncertainties that characterized the struggles to keep El Materno open, Abadía-Barrero demonstrates that any study of medical care needs to be embedded in larger political histories.
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Health Networks
Can They Be the Solution?
Thomas P. Weil
University of Michigan Press, 2001
Thomas P. Weil believes that the formation of health networks, or integrated delivery systems, represents a more sophisticated attempt to restructure America's health system than those previously undertaken. He argues that this is so because integrated delivery systems require the application of established business principles and well-researched clinical acumen to the delivery of medical care services. This book evaluates whether recently formed health networks can generate enough fiscal savings to provide greater access to and quality of health care despite the current trend of cutbacks in reimbursement from Medicare and managed care plans.
Unfortunately, most hospitals that have formed alliances with a previous competitor or nearby teaching facility have found that they are not yet achieving the savings originally forecast. Weil finds that these shortcomings often have been caused by the difficulties in achieving a strategic fit between two partners, in finding a middle ground when differences in culture and values surface, and in implementing operational efficiencies. The book concludes with a discussion of a number of ways in which networks might cut costs in the future.
Health Networks will be of interest to medical practitioners and administrators, as well as to students in health services management programs.
Thomas P. Weil is President, Bedford Health Associates, Inc., management consultants for health and hospital services.
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Health Policy and the Disadvantaged
Lawrence D. Brown, ed.
Duke University Press, 1991
This important collection of essays, originating in a 1989 conference on the disadvantaged in American health care, provides incisive commentary on U.S. health care policy and politics. Examining public responses to health crises and analyzing the political logic of the American community, this volume charts the immobility of U.S. health policy in recent years and points to its disastrous consequences for the 1990s.
Focusing on the particular needs of disadvantaged groups—the elderly, children, people with AIDS, the mentally ill, the chemically dependent, the homeless, the hungry, the medically uninsured—these essays develop strong policy statements. The authors describe the growth in U.S. health care programs, from Kerr-Mills to Medicare, Medicaid, and subsequent revisions, and stress the serious omissions resulting from incremental policy expansion, both in identifying disadvantaged groups and in implementing programs. They report the weakness of the U.S. health care system compared to systems of other technologically developed countries.

Contributors. Deborah A. Stone and Theodore R. Marmor, Judith Feder, Alice Sardell, Bruce C. Vladeck, Michael Lipsky and Marc A. Thibodeau, Daniel M. Fox, William E. McAuliffe, M. Gregg Bloche and Francine Cournos, Lawrence D. Brown, James A. Morrone

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Healthcare Reform and Poverty in Latin America
Edited by Peter Lloyd-Sherlock
University of London Press, 2000

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Healthy Voices, Unhealthy Silence
Advocacy and Health Policy for the Poor
Colleen M. Grogan and Michael K. Gusmano
Georgetown University Press, 2007

Public silence in policymaking can be deafening. When advocates for a disadvantaged group decline to speak up, not only are their concerns not recorded or acted upon, but also the collective strength of the unspoken argument is lessened—a situation that undermines the workings of deliberative democracy by reflecting only the concerns of more powerful interests.

But why do so many advocates remain silent on key issues they care about and how does that silence contribute to narrowly defined policies? What can individuals and organizations do to amplify their privately expressed concerns for policy change?

In Healthy Voices, Unhealthy Silence, Colleen M. Grogan and Michael K. Gusmano address these questions through the lens of state-level health care advocacy for the poor. They examine how representatives for the poor participate in an advisory board process by tying together existing studies; extensive interviews with key players; and an in-depth, first-hand look at the Connecticut Medicaid advisory board's deliberations during the managed care debate. Drawing on the concepts of deliberative democracy, agenda setting, and nonprofit advocacy, Grogan and Gusmano reveal the reasons behind advocates' often unexpected silence on major issues, assess how capable nonprofits are at affecting policy debates, and provide prescriptive advice for creating a participatory process that adequately addresses the health care concerns of the poor and dispossessed.

Though exploring specifically state-level health care advocacy for the poor, the lessons Grogan and Gusmano offer here are transferable across issue areas and levels of government. Public policy scholars, advocacy organizations, government workers, and students of government administration will be well-served by this significant study.

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The Historical Ecology of Malaria in Ethiopia
Deposing the Spirits
James C. McCann
Ohio University Press, 2015

Malaria is an infectious disease like no other: it is a dynamic force of nature and Africa’s most deadly and debilitating malady. James C. McCann tells the story of malaria in human, narrative terms and explains the history and ecology of the disease through the science of landscape change. All malaria is local. Instead of examining the disease at global or continental scale, McCann investigates malaria’s adaptation and persistence in a single region, Ethiopia, over time and at several contrasting sites.

Malaria has evolved along with humankind and has adapted to even modern-day technological efforts to eradicate it or to control its movement. Insecticides, such as DDT, drug prophylaxis, development of experimental vaccines, and even molecular-level genetic manipulation have proven to be only temporary fixes. The failure of each stand-alone solution suggests the necessity of a comprehensive ecological understanding of malaria, its transmission, and its persistence, one that accepts its complexity and its local dynamism as fundamental features.

The story of this disease in Ethiopia includes heroes, heroines, witches, spirits—and a very clever insect—as well as the efforts of scientists in entomology, agroecology, parasitology, and epidemiology. Ethiopia is an ideal case for studying the historical human culture of illness, the dynamism of nature’s disease ecology, and its complexity within malaria.

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The Histories of HIVs
The Emergence of the Multiple Viruses That Caused the AIDS Epidemics
William H. Schneider
Ohio University Press, 2021

This new collection of essays on HIV viruses spans disciplines to topple popular narratives about the origins of the AIDS pandemic and the impact of the disease on public health policy.

With a death toll in the tens of millions, the AIDS pandemic was one of the worst medical disasters of the past century. The disease was identified in 1981, at the height of miraculous postwar medical achievements, including effective antibiotics, breakthrough advances in heart surgery and transplantations, and cheap, safe vaccines—smallpox had been eradicated just a few years earlier. Arriving as they did during this era of confidence in modern medicine, the HIV epidemics shook the public’s faith in health science. Despite subsequent success in identifying, testing, and treating AIDS, the emergence of epidemics and outbreaks of Ebola, Zika, and the novel coronaviruses (SARS and COVID-19) are stark reminders that such confidence in modern medicine is not likely to be restored until the emergence of these viruses is better understood.

This collection combines the work of major social science and humanities scholars with that of virologists and epidemiologists to provide a broader understanding of the historical, social, and cultural circumstances that produced the pandemic. The authors argue that the emergence of the HIV viruses and their epidemic spread were not the result of a random mutation but rather broader new influences whose impact depended upon a combination of specific circumstances at different places and times. The viruses emerged and were transmitted according to population movement and urbanization, changes in sexual relations, new medical procedures, and war. In this way, the AIDS pandemic was not a chance natural occurrence, but a human-made disaster.

Essays by: Ernest M. Drucker, Tamara Giles-Vernick, Ch. Didier Gondola, Guillaume Lachenal, Amandine Lauro, Preston A. Marx, Stephanie Rupp, François Simon, Jorge Varanda

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History and Health Policy in the United States
Putting the Past Back In
Stevens, Rosemary A
Rutgers University Press, 2006
In our rapidly advancing scientific and technological world, many take great pride and comfort in believing that we are on the threshold of new ways of thinking, living, and understanding ourselves. But despite dramatic discoveries that appear in every way to herald the future, legacies still carry great weight. Even in swiftly developing fields such as health and medicine, most systems and policies embody a sequence of earlier ideas and preexisting patterns.

In History and Health Policy in the United States, seventeen leading scholars of history, the history of medicine, bioethics, law, health policy, sociology, and organizational theory make the case for the usefulness of history in evaluating and formulating health policy today. In looking at issues as varied as the consumer economy, risk, and the plight of the uninsured, the contributors uncover the often unstated assumptions that shape the way we think about technology, the role of government, and contemporary medicine. They show how historical perspectives can help policymakers avoid the pitfalls of partisan, outdated, or merely fashionable approaches, as well as how knowledge of previous systems can offer alternatives when policy directions seem unclear.

Together, the essays argue that it is only by knowing where we have been that we can begin to understand health services today or speculate on policies for tomorrow.

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The History of Blood Transfusion in Sub-Saharan Africa
William H. Schneider
Ohio University Press, 2013

This first extensive study of the practice of blood transfusion in Africa traces the history of one of the most important therapies in modern medicine from the period of colonial rule to independence and the AIDS epidemic. The introduction of transfusion held great promise for improving health, but like most new medical practices, transfusion needed to be adapted to the needs of sub-Saharan Africa, for which there was no analogous treatment in traditional African medicine.

This otherwise beneficent medical procedure also created a “royal road” for microorganisms, and thus played a central part in the emergence of human immune viruses in epidemic form. As with more developed health care systems, blood transfusion practices in sub-Saharan Africa were incapable of detecting the emergence of HIV. As a result, given the wide use of transfusion, it became an important pathway for the initial spread of AIDS. Yet African health officials were not without means to understand and respond to the new danger, thanks to forty years of experience and a framework of appreciating long-standing health risks. The response to this risk, detailed in this book, yields important insight into the history of epidemics and HIV/AIDS.

Drawing on research from colonial-era governments, European Red Cross societies, independent African governments, and directly from health officers themselves, this book is the only historical study of the practice of blood transfusion in Africa.

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History Of Neglect
Health Care Southern Blacks Mill Workers
Edward H. Beardsley
University of Tennessee Press, 1990
20th Century, Southern Black History
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HIV Exceptionalism
Development through Disease in Sierra Leone
Adia Benton
University of Minnesota Press, 2015

WINNER, 2017 RACHEL CARSON PRIZE, SOCIETY FOR THE SOCIAL STUDIES OF SCIENCE

In 2002, Sierra Leone emerged from a decadelong civil war. Seeking international attention and development aid, its government faced a dilemma. Though devastated by conflict, Sierra Leone had a low prevalence of HIV. However, like most African countries, it stood to benefit from a large influx of foreign funds specifically targeted at HIV/AIDS prevention and care.

What Adia Benton chronicles in this ethnographically rich and often moving book is how one war-ravaged nation reoriented itself as a country suffering from HIV at the expense of other, more pressing health concerns. During her fieldwork in the capital, Freetown, a city of one million people, at least thirty NGOs administered internationally funded programs that included HIV/AIDS prevention and care. Benton probes why HIV exceptionalism—the idea that HIV is an exceptional disease requiring an exceptional response—continues to guide approaches to the epidemic worldwide and especially in Africa, even in low-prevalence settings.

In the fourth decade since the emergence of HIV/AIDS, many today are questioning whether the effort and money spent on this health crisis has in fact helped or exacerbated the problem. HIV Exceptionalism does this and more, asking, what are the unanticipated consequences that HIV/AIDS development programs engender?

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Hospital Costs in Massachusetts
An Econometric Study
Mary Lee Ingbar and Lester D. Taylor
Harvard University Press
The authors present an analysis of direct departmental expenses in 72 community hospitals in Massachusetts for the years 1958–59 and 1962–63. Their purpose is to offer new insights into the fundamental relation between the costs of medical care and the administrative structure of hospitals. The conclusions of their study indicate that the hospital industry could find more efficient ways of providing medical care through organizational changes and thus offset or at least moderate the pressures to increase costs.
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How COVID-19 Took Over the World
Lessons for the Future
Edited by Christine Loh
Hong Kong University Press, 2023
This analysis of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic will help health professionals and policymakers move forward.

The pandemic left disorder and crises in its wake everywhere it struck. Drawing on disciplines including public health, politics, and socioeconomics, this book tracks the spread of COVID-19 to weave a coherent picture that explains how scientists learned about the virus, how authorities reacted around the world, and how different societies coped.

Written by a leading team of public health, policy, and economics experts, How COVID-19 Took Over the World provides an in-depth analysis of various countries’ responses to the pandemic, as well as suggestions to increase the capability to fight future pandemics. The first part of the book provides an overview of global governance and international cooperation, the economic and social consequences of the outbreak, and breakthroughs in mathematical modeling and COVID-19 vaccines. The second part of the book examines and compares specific countries and regions through the lens of good governance, social contract, and political trust.

How COVID-19 Took Over the World is essential for anyone seeking to learn from the impact of COVID-19, particularly professionals and policymakers, as well as those with a general interest in governance and pandemics.
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How Fat Works
Philip A. Wood
Harvard University Press, 2006
An experimental pathologist and molecular geneticist, Philip Wood uses gene-knockout technology to study the way mouse genes regulate the metabolism of fat—research that provides insights into the workings of fatty-acid metabolism in humans and what can happen when that metabolic balance goes awry. Based on the classes he regularly teaches to first- and second-year medical students, Wood's book reviews the individual and public health burden of obesity and clarifies often-used, but often inadequately explained, terms employed in the continuing cultural and scientific debate about excess fat. He explains the role of fat in the healthy body, how fat is made, stored, and burned, and demonstrates how excess fat can lead to an array of metabolic disorders and diseases, from hypercholesterolemia and insulin resistance to diabetes. He reviews what recent research can tell us about specific genes or groups of genes that can lead to specific metabolic disorders. He explains the science behind common weight-loss regimens and why those regimens might succeed or fail, and reviews the complex interplay of hormones, genes, and stress in the way our bodies deal with fat through the life cycle. How Fat Works is a concise, clear, and up-to-date primer on the workings of fat, and essential reading for professionals entering careers in medicine and public health administration or anyone wanting a better understanding of one of our most urgent health crises.
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front cover of How Many Doctors Do We Need?
How Many Doctors Do We Need?
Duncan Yaggy and Patricia Hodgson, eds.
Duke University Press, 1986
This volume addresses the public and private policies affecting physician supply in the United States, focusing on the physician surplus, market forces, and geographic distribution of physicians, life-style choices and evolving practice patterns, market influences of foreign medical graduates, the university's role in establishing priorities for medical education, and other pertinent topics.
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front cover of How Will the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Affect Liability Insurance Costs?
How Will the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Affect Liability Insurance Costs?
David I. Auerbach
RAND Corporation, 2014
This report identifies potential mechanisms through which the Affordable Care Act (ACA) might affect liability claim costs and develops rough estimates of the size and direction of expected impacts as of 2016. Overall, effects of the ACA appear likely to be small relative to aggregate auto, workers’ compensation, and medical malpractice insurer payouts, but some states and insurance lines may experience cost changes as high as 5 percent or more.
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